


Golden Brown

by bealeciphers



Category: The Flash (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Drabble, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-21
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:37:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3978340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bealeciphers/pseuds/bealeciphers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Len finds out Barry Allen can sing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Brown

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to nerabart on tumblr for the prompt :)

* * *

 

Santini’s hyenas were really more _his_ problem; and the ticking time bomb was the reason _the Flash_ was here.  But it didn’t take more than a glance at those ferocious teeth as the creatures loomed forward for Len to yell “I’ll diffuse the bomb!” and switch the roles.

Len barreled across the carpeted floor, sliding under the minimalist desk and jumping onto the chair once he was behind it.  Len pushed the bomb in front of him, seeing the wires and immediately trying to recollect everything he’d learned from his experience with explosives.  He had to set the cold gun in his lap.  His eyes shifted up immediately to the scene in front of him.

Santini’s office was garish.  There was a legitimate gold tapestry on the wall with a depiction of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight… which was worth a good fortune and Len only knew what it was because he’d come to steal it.  Still, the tapestry was illuminated by two torches on the wall, woven gold and modern; and it matched the long, gold and maroon carpeting on the floor.  It was too much.  The paintings on the walls were rich and colorful but the desk, bookshelf, couch and chairs in the large office minimalist.  Since the room was huge, larger than a Central City apartment, the effect really just… did nothing for it.  

The hyenas were the high point, definitely.  Len wondered if, in a future where he and Lisa actually stopped joking about making an evil Gold/Cold lair and d _id it_ , he should get… trained polar bears or something.  That would be interesting.

Just as interesting as watching the Flash running in circles around the hyenas, stopping long enough for them to lunge for him before darting away in a bolt of lightning and repeating it all over again.  “How?!” The Flash was yelling, “Why?! Why are _you_ here?”

“Figured Santini’d be distracted,” Len said.  His gaze fell back to the bomb.  The construction was fairly known, expensive.  It looked like a bastardized version of the designs of a Russian pyromaniac Mick had once had a feud with.  “Knew he was planning to lure the Flash to his home and blow you up once and for all.  Couldn’t let all these priceless artifacts go to waste.”

The Flash looked at Len, jaw dropping for a moment and Len caught his eye. _Fuck_ , Len thought for a moment as he stared.  He couldn’t help it, every time he saw the Flash in costume, remembering what Barry Allen looked like without it; _pretty, browned haired and Bambi-eyed_.  Just the type of guy he never got.

Leonard Snart, perpetually unlucky in love.

_Not.  The.  Time_ , Len reminded himself, and he forced himself to focus back on the bomb just as Barry Al- the Flash flashed away yet again a few yards from the hyenas.  “They respond to sound!” Len called out.  He rolled up his sleeves and turned the bomb to its side.  The cylinder in the middle was chemical, definitely, and whatever charge would be released into it when the timer went down was _obviously_ beyond Len’s means to scientifically de… charge.   _Insert scientific terminology beyond Grade 11,_ Len thought, annoyed.  But Len was at least familiar with bombs.

He _could_ escape though.  There were five minutes on the timer.  Len could grab the tapestry and run out of here with his bag just like he’d planned, stuffing any other objects he saw on his way in his coat pockets as he did.

It wasn’t _Len’s_ friends who were locked in the basement of this place.  The Flash was the one stupid enough to fall for a “We kidnapped your friend, come to this place at x hour and give us x object/money.”  

Len sort of hoped that, whoever the Santini’s captured, it wasn’t Cisco Ramon.  He, Lisa, and Mick had a bit of a soft spot for the kid… despite past encounters.

Len grabbed a pen from the front of the desk and prodded at a circuit board.  When it wasn’t budging, he grabbed his gun, adjusting the beam.

“What do you mean they respond to sound?!” The Flash yelled, moving back, sideways, left, right, up, down, a constant pattern that was frustrating the hyenas and making them even more hungry.

Len wished he’d brought anyone else along.  Today was a bad day to go for a selfish score.   _Pied Piper would have been great here_ , he thought, pissed at himself.

“When I came in they were listening to classical music,” Len said.  He shot an incredibly small beam of ice straight at a screw on the circuit board.  Banging that with the pen, it shattered.  “After you triggered the alarm, the music stopped and a screeching sound went up.  They woke up and got very angry and I was about to find myself fighting two hyenas with a gun that shoots _ice_ , so good timing, by the way.”  Len shot the other three screws and pulled the cover off the circuit board.  

He could work with this.

“I didn’t come here to save _your_ life,” the Flash said angrily.  The scarlet speedster looked up, Len saw out of the corner of his eye, and jumped away from a hyena claw at the last possible moment.

It was close, and Len let out a breath he’d been holding.  “Funny how we keep meeting like this,” Len said.  He pulled the pen apart, screwing off the lid.  The spring inside fell into his hand and he put it between his front teeth.  Wincing a bit at the pain, Len forced the spring into a ramrod straight line.

His plan wasn’t to cut any of the wires or try to take out the chemical cylinder or any number of other solutions that would likely be booby trapped.  Len knew _timers_.  He knew how to run any number of watches after years of adjusting and coordinating his heists.  This, Len understood, and he could play to his strengths here.

“What kind of music again?” The Flash asked desperately, jumping away from the animals.  “Hey, kitty, calm down, I’m not trying to hurt you,” the Flash tried to plead with them.

_Of course_ , Len thought as he rolled his eyes, _about to be blown to bits but the Flash wasn’t willing to hurt two animals_.  “Classical.  Don’t fucking ask me; I’m not one of those douches who play Mozart while they’re doing business.”

“People do that?”  The Flash laughed but the sound cut off suddenly.  “Oops!”

Len looked up, worried.  

The Flash had tripped over the couch.  The speedster was on his feet in moments though, continuing his merry chase with the hyenas unharmed.  

“Yes.”  Len kept his concentration on the timer.  Three minutes, fifty six seconds.  He could rig this.  Len could do this. _But no more solo jobs_ , Len thought to himself, _not anymore.  Not now that everyone has gone fucking crazy._

“Amaz-ing grace!” The Flash yelled out, loud and… in tune?  The Flash had a nice set of pipes. “How sweet, the- oh shit.  You two don’t like that one.  Um…”

The Flash’s plan was to sing the hyenas a _lullaby_? Len huffed in disbelief.  He focused his attention on the circuit board, raising his finger to press one of the two buttons on the timer.  The buttons wouldn’t be active, not yet, one would be ‘+1 minute’ and the other ‘-1 minute’; Len could figure this out.  

He had until the timer reached two minutes, though.  Not ideal.

“It was quieter,” Len said loudly, clarifying, because it wasn’t like the Flash’s voice sounded bad and if this was the only was he was going to get the tapestry and his payday… sure, he could work with Barry here, “lots of piano.”

“I can’t sing the sound of a piano!” The Flash said, angrily.  He ran in a circle around the hyenas, building up a speed but one of the animals immediately lunged forward and the electric ring jolted away, fading back into a man in a red suit.  

The Flash was _incredible_.  Len wondered if the man knew just how incredible he was.  

“Um… sweeeeet caroline,” the Flash tried, and then paused.  “Shit.  Um… shit.”  He kept darting around and Len focused on the bomb.  Where had the Flash learned to sing?  For someone so young the weird kid had a lot of talents.

“Golden brown, _texture like sun_ ,” the Flash sang, darting between each pause in the words, moving from one end of the room to the other, “Lays me down, with my mind she runs.”  His voice dropped, low and strong… practiced.  “Throughout the night no need to fight… _Never a frown_ , with _golden brown_.”

Len was not distracted.  

“Every time, _just like the last_ ,” Barry sang slowly.  He held his hands out to the hyenas, seeing something changing, but the animals were at him again and he moved away.  “On her ship, _tied to the mast_.  To distant lands, takes both my hands… _Never a frown_ , with _golden brown_.”

Stop.  Fucking focus.  Make the timer repeat minute 2 on repeat before a professional can dismantle it.  

Get the tapestry.

Focus. 

…

Len was humming.  His fingers tapped on the map in front of him as the music that was stuck in his head kept playing on repeat.  Or the memory of the music.  

Because no matter how many times he listened to the Stranglers sing the song, the version stuck in his head was definitely Barry Allen.

_Golden brown, finer temptress._

Len could definitely concentrate.  “To do list,” Len mumbled under his breath because talking out loud would force him to listen to anything but the voice still ringing in his ears, “stake out the drop zone.  Sell the tapestry.  Buy Lisa and Mick a beer.”

_Through the ages she’s heading west._

Barry Allen had nice eyes; the mask didn’t do anything to make them less distracting.  The red rings around the speedster’s eyes only made them even more prominent and it was hard not to focus on anything else even with the tight pseudo-leather around the lithe and toned form.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight retailed for almost eighty thousand.  Len could believably sell it for forty, since the object was now listed as stolen and wouldn’t be able to be put on display in any public house.

A good score.  It had been very easy after the Flash arrived; Len hadn’t been certain he could fight off two trained hyenas even with his cold gun.

_From far away, stays for a day._

Where had the speedster learned to sing?

Len sighed, dropping his head into his hands.  He slowly slid his palms over his face, and then fast, trying to rub blood back into his cheeks as if that would wake him up.  It didn’t help that his hands were perpetually cold.  Ever since he started using that gun there was a chill in his finger bones that never left- Len was afraid he’d get early onset arthritis but… something about cold made him tired and comfortable and he didn’t like the idea of constantly sticking his hands in front of a fire to warm them.

_God_.  Barry Allen had a nice voice.  Why the fuck did that matter to Len?  Why did it matter that the speedster was handsome and overly kind even to things that wanted to eat him; and he had wild and boyish brown hair; and a stupid, idiotically smooth voice?  It shouldn’t fucking matter.

_Never a frown, with golden brown._

Len gave up.  He’d figure out how to sell the tapestry tomorrow but there was no way anything was going to get coordinated with that song ringing in his ears. _Is this what obsession feels like?_

He needed a cold shower, an incognito window, and a stiff drink.


End file.
